


Coalescence

by SeekingSelkies



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Birthday Party, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Jon Teaches Everyone About Emulsifiers, Just two men nerding out about chemistry and falling in love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nobody Cares Except Martin, S1 Archives, Tannins Are A Proven Headache Trigger, Touch-Starved Jon Sims, listening to people ramble about their highly specific knowledge and interests is a love language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:40:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23726971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeekingSelkies/pseuds/SeekingSelkies
Summary: The scene from Martin's birthday where they all go for ice-cream and Jon "teaches everyone about emulsifiers" (read: infodumps on his beloved colleagues for hours).Martin returns the favour and talks for an inordinate length of time about tanninsEveryone else is just watching these two in exasperation while one of them goes full nerd about chemistry and the other gazes at them with the worlds biggest heart-eyes.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 92
Kudos: 455





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You all keep roasting Jon for talking about emulsifiers but it's a really interesting concept actually and it made me miss my uni and academy chemistry days so now you all have to put up with me giving you a very poorly explained but very excited ramble about oil in water emulsions and the inherent instability of mixing a hydrophobic substance with water
> 
> Soon to be followed by an even more excited ramble about tannins.
> 
> No betas, we rattle off nerdy chemistry fanfiction at 4am with no regard for continuity or consistency like the disasters we (and by we I mean I) am
> 
> I haven't decided what the final nerd ramble will be about yet, I'm personally very tempted for it to be about honey (because I think it's interesting and also it's nice) but I'm very happy to take suggestions of things you want to hear the boys ramble about while the other gazes at them with impossible fondness,

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am emphatically not endorsing copying Jon at the end of this chapter. Especially in the current climate. Wash your damn hands. Keep safe.

Jon has a habit of leaving his door open

Not because he particularly wants people disturbing him at work. Quite the opposite, in fact

But the hair on the back of his neck stands on end every time someone knocks, and it’s rare enough that anyone actually comes in that he’s willing to accept the risk that occasionally, someone can just wander straight in uninvited.

Usually Martin

“Um, Jon?”

Especially Martin.

“Yes?” He doesn’t look up. Out of the corner of his eye he vaguely registers a mug of tea being gingerly placed on the edge of the desk. Far too close to his laptop.

“That’s close enough, Martin!” He turns to glare at him,

“Sorry, I just, I thought you might need a break, nobody’s seen you outside of the office for hours, I’ll move it-” Jon reaches to move the mug away from his computer but Martin, still babbling, is already a fraction ahead of him, and their fingers brush.

Martin yanks his hand back like he’s been scalded

“Sorry, Jon, I was just trying to…

“It’s _fine_ , Martin” he sighs, pointedly returning his gaze back to his work.

“Right, yeah, I’ll just leave you to it then”

Once Martin’s footsteps have faded from the hallway, Jon reaches for the mug, deliberately not noticing the way the hairs on the back of his hand are standing on end from the all-too-brief contact with Martin

Jon doesn’t think about how this is the first contact he’s had with another human being for..

He doesn’t think about how long it’s been.

…..

Jon isn’t in the habit of closing his door, but this usually isn’t a problem

“Knock knock, boss!”

Tim pokes his head round the side of the door, grinning, before stepping into the room, Sasha in tow, both wearing their jackets.

“Going somewhere?”

“Yes, and so are you, come on” Sasha reaches to close his laptop, but Jon slides it out of her grasp

“I can’t, I’ve still got stuff to finish and it’s only-ah” He looks at the clock. 5pm already.

“Exactly. It’s Martin’s birthday, we’re taking him out for ice cream” Tim leans against the doorframe, hands in the pockets of his jacket, still grinning.

“Oh, is it?”

“Yes! We asked him what he wanted to do, he did the usual ‘Oh no you really don’t need to bother with anything, it’s fine, really’ so we decided everyone likes ice cream and we’re celebrating whether he likes it or not. I told you on Tuesday. You muttered something about ‘Well maybe he’ll finally grow up’, or something like that” Her imitations of the pair of them really were uncanny

Not that he’d admit that

“Now come on, he’s waiting for us” Sasha’s hand edges towards the laptop again, and Jon just has time to save it before she shoots out and slaps it shut.

“ _Fine_ ”

******

They end up in a little gelato place in Soho, one of those hipster places where the cones are shaped like flowers

“I saw it on the ‘gram” Tim explains as they walked in

“Oh, you ‘saw it on the ‘gram’ did you? Of course you did” Sasha laughs, nudging him, before they launched into a long debate about which flavour combination to choose.

It was a small shop, and one of those chilly, overcast days where ice-cream isn’t particularly appealing unless you’ve been through a spectacularly bad break-up and that warrants burying yourself at home with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s and a comfort film of your choice, so aside from one couple tucked away in the far corner, they were the only people there. Jon scanned the menu, trying to decide whether to voice his feelings on the existence of a ‘Lime basil’ flavour.

“What about you, Jon?” Martin’s voice breaks his thoughts

“Um, just rum and raisin, I think”

“Oh! I, uh, I didn’t take you for the type” He’s _looking_ at Jon with a mixture of surprise and something else entirely, and Jon wonders how long he could get away with leaving without seeming rude.

“Well, my grandmother liked it, so it was the only one we really had in the house”

“What was she like?” Martin asks, quiet beneath the continued bickering of Tim and Sasha over whether mixing mango with cherry and chocolate is a travesty or a decision of gastronomic genius.

“A bit stern, sometimes, but I mean, I was difficult, to say the least, so she did her best, which is better than most people get I suppose”

“You never talk about her”

He didn’t. He shied resolutely away from personal topics at work, so why, under the glaring artificial light of the ice cream parlour, was he talking about her now to _Martin_ , of all people?

Tim and Sasha have finally come to a decision, and Jon and Martin make their way to order. Martin has one scoop of coconut and one of chocolate, and Jon catches himself glancing at him in surprise in turn. Not, unfortunately, with enough subtlety to escape Martin’s notice

“What?”

“I, well, I ‘didn’t take you for the type’”

Martin laughs. Well, less of a true laugh and more of an exhale of amusement.

“It’s my birthday, thought I’d push the boat out, you know? And I like Bounties”

They wedge themselves onto one of the small, dark wooden tables opposite Tim and Sasha, who have progressed to testing each other’s choices and critiquing them at length. Jon’s ice cream choices are met with much less grace than Martin had afforded him, and Martin’s choice earns a appraising look from Sasha and a confused look from Tim. Jon sits there, ignoring the way his leg is pressed against Martins, desperately trying to fight against entropy and prevent the gelato from running down his wrist, while the others chatt merrily away, until Tim says.

“What’s the difference between gelato and ice cream anyway?”

At some point during his grandmothers ‘Buy every 50p book in the charity shop in the hopes of finding one to amuse her precocious grandson’ phase, she had picked up one about the chemistry of food that Jon had devoured, no pun intended. It was one of the rare books he had read more than once. So, like a field of cows where some thoughtless wanderer has left the gate just ever-so-slightly ajar, that’s all the opening Jon needs

“Well, they have different proportions of air and fat. Ice cream has a higher proportion of fat in comparison to gelato, since ice cream is made primarily with cream and egg yolk, sometimes, whereas gelato classically has a higher milk content. There’s also a difference in how much air is in each one, ice cream has more air than gelato because it has a higher overrun as a result of being churned faster so more air is folded in and increases the volume…

“Jon” Sasha tries to cut in, but he’s too far gone

“…the egg yolk acts as a sort of natural emulsifier. Ice cream is basically a oil-in-water emulsion, the oil, or fat, being a hydrophobic substance which repels water, making the whole structure thermodynamically unstable and prone to separation. There’s a few ways oil and water can separate, in ice cream they want to avoid it creaming….”

“Creaming?!” Tim cuts in with a howl of laughter, but Martin shushes him

“Yes, so basically, the emulsion is a lot of smaller fat droplets suspended in water, and if they’re not stable, those droplets will join together to form bigger droplets, but sometimes those bigger droplets rise to the surface during production, and that’s what they call it. You need an emulsifying agent to stabilise it, some kind of monoglyceride or polysaccharide, and they displace the proteins from the surface of the little fat globules so they’re more prone to partial coalescence”

“Oh my god” Tim whines, throwing his face to the heavens in exasperation. “Can he hear himself, do you think?”

“Shut up, Tim!” Martin hisses, propping up his face in one hand to listen

“Well, at least they’re enjoying themselves?” Sasha says, smiling at them.

“What does ‘partial coalescence’ even _mean_?” Tim demands

“It’s…so when you’re whipping ice cream, the speed of the rotating blades causes some of these fat globules to form deliberately, and they surround the air bubbles that form in the ice cream and help to stabilise them, so you have this sort of, this sort of network, if you like, of fat throughout the whole ice-cream and that stops it from shrinking as much when it freezes and makes it smoother to eat and stops it melting as quickly. Egg yolk isn’t as effective as an emulsifier when you compare it to synthetic ones like monoglycerides and diglycerides or polysorbate though, egg yolk is mostly triglycerides, phospholipids and cholesterol…“

He’s more animated than Martin’s ever seen him, a light in his eyes never seen in the dimness of the archives, waving his ice cream precariously so the occasional melted drop falls onto the table. At some point he has actually _rolled up his sleeves_ , affording Martin a glimpse of his sinewey forearms and Martin can see a trickle of ice cream beginning to dry on his wrist. He is briefly distracted from listening to Jon to wonder what it would be like if he licked it off, running his tongue up the length of Jon’s arm, but shakes the thought away.

Martin is dimly aware of Tim tugging on Sasha’s sleeve out of the corner of his eye, he is slightly less dimly aware of Tim clapping a hand on his shoulder and wishing him happy birthday.

“Oh, yes, thank you. Thank you both”

“Anytime” Tim says with a bemused smile and that ever-present twinkle in his eye.

Jon is still in full-flow, and hasn’t seemed to notice Tim and Sasha leaving. Martin wonders if Jon senses the pressure of Martins leg jammed against his on the tiny table, wonders if he’s as aware of it as Martin is.

Probably not.

Except that Jon is looking at Martin, sort of, still talking, although Martin isn’t sure how much of him Jon is actually seeing, in the same way that he’s not sure how much he’s actually listening to Jon anymore, Jon’s mind jumping from one point to the other so fast that Martin can’t visualise any of the concepts he’s actually talking about, he’s just happy listening to his voice…

“Do you have a pen?” Jon asks, looking at Martin again with shining eyes and God, Martin wishes he could whip this feeling into his own personal ice cream flavour and keep it in his freezer for bad days.

“I, uh, what?”

“I need to draw it, to explain it properly”

“Oh, ok”

Martin fishes an old biro from his pocket, and Jon grabs it from him, brushing his fingers again in his eagerness, and Martin feels the same jolt deep in the pit of his stomach he’d felt earlier the same day passing Jon his cup of tea.

The pen doesn’t work, at first, so Jon puts it absent-mindedly into his mouth to try and get the ink to flow. Martin has to stop himself gawking at his lips, and the brief flash of Jon’s tongue as he takes the pen out and tries to use it again.

Jonathan Sims was going to be the death of him.

This time the pen works, and Martin watches him drawing shapes and equations, barely stopping for breath.

“Does that make sense?” he says, finally, fixing his deep brown eyes on Martin.

“Yeah, I uh, I think so” Martin smiles, and Jon smiles back with gleaming eyes, before turning to the empty seats where Tim and Sasha have been, and then looks at the girl currently mopping the floors, and the darkness of the street through the window. He blinks, dazed.

“What time is it?”

“Um…” Martin looks around them, finally fixing on the traitorous clock at the far end of the room “About nine o’clock?”

“Shit. I should, I should go”

“Oh, yeah, of course! Ok”

Martin edges himself away from the table, Jon slinking behind him as soon as the gap is wide enough, stepping towards the door.

“Well, um. Happy birthday, Martin” he says, not meeting his eyes, his tone back to the same Jonathan Sims he knew and hopelessly chased the approval of at work. The Jon who scolds him for just about anything he could think of. A thick disappointment coats Martins tongue

“Thanks”

As it turns out, they both have to go to the same tube station to get home, walking in silence. A thousand thoughts chase each other in Martins head, and he can’t bring himself to look in Jon’s direction.

When they get there, Jon reaches his hand out to Martin, all formality again. Martin almost doesn’t take it, wanting to bat it aside and demand why Jon can’t just be like that at work all the time, that he wouldn’t mind if he talked non-stop about emulsifiers and phospholipids and coa-fucking-lescence if it meant he’d actually look at Martin with something other than disdain for a change.

He takes Jon’s hand, still sticky from the melted ice cream. He wonders if Jon has noticed

Jon buries his face in his hands the second he sits down in the empty tube carriage.

“Stupid, stupid, idiot Sims” he growls to himself

How long had he been talking? Three hours? Four? How long had Tim and Sasha been gone? Nobody wants to listen to you talk about emulsifiers, _Jesus_ , Jon.

 _Except Martin_ , a tiny voice in his head says

Well, that didn’t mean anything. Martin was a people pleaser. Martin was nice to everyone. Martin Blackwood would probably let Jon hit him with his car and then apologise for any damages. Martin was only listening out of pity.

His hand is sticky from the ice cream. How had he not noticed that before? He has never been a fan of the sensation, and feels a creeping unease from the base of his spine. He reaches into his pocket for a tissue, or hand sanitiser, and finds his pockets distressingly barren. Well, he reasons, the carriage is empty, so there’s nobody to see or judge him for what he does next.

He licks the remaining residue of the ice cream off his hand, then stares blankly out of the window for the rest of the journey.

He thinks very hard about not thinking about Martin Blackwood.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok I know it sounds like Martin has no idea what Jon is talking about when Jon says 'You know there's a lot of tannins in tea, right?' but Martin Blackwood knows exactly how much tannins are in tea, which is exactly why he only drinks green tea, and he's going to go off on Jon with all his tea knowledge to spite him for daring to suggest that Martin isn't aware of the tannin content of tea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Martin's babbling about indicators and reactions is actually based off my own high school chemistry project. It was great. I could add more rambling about tannins but it's 4am and I should probably act like a normal human person and go to sleep

Jon is not in the habit of leaving his door closed, although now he leaves it just slightly ajar, rather than fully open, to deter people from walking in uninvited

It hasn’t worked thus far, with a desk now covered in cake and plastic cups of red wine and a gaggle of his colleagues all standing around him.

Tim is still laughing long after the tape has turned off

“You’d never fire me and you know it”

“Don’t push your luck, Stoker” Jon warns, trying his best to put on an authoritative tone.

“Yeah, yeah” Tim waves him away, still chuckling to himself, then goes to help himself to cake.

Martin is hovering with a nearly full cup of wine, only sipping at it when he catches Sasha or Tim looking in his direction

“How are the tannins?” Jon asks him dryly

“What?” Martin frowns

“The whole ‘I don’t drink wine because of the tannins but I chain-drink tea?’ thing?” Jon reminds him “If you’re going to lie, Martin, you might want to pick something that isn’t so easy to disprove”

“Oh! Well, I mean, I know _that_ , Jon, that’s why I only drink green tea” Jon wishes Martin would stop giving him that look, that ‘How do you not know this, everyone knows this?’ look. Martin grabs a nearby chair and pulls it towards him so he’s sitting near to Jon, but at a distance that’s weirdly formal, like he doesn’t want to be too close somehow. Jon wonders why.

“Yeah, I mean I used to drink black tea too but my migraines when I was a teenager were so bad I’d be laid up in bed for days, and my doctor had me make a diary of all the things that could possibly trigger it and then there it was in black and white, my eleven cups of tea a day habit had to go!” he laughs “But I did a bit of digging into what it is in tea that triggers migraines and initially I thought it was just the caffeine so I just switched to decaf but that doesn’t make any difference to the tannin content. But it turns out green tea has the lowest content of that kind of polyphenol so that’s why I started drinking that instead and I’ve been ok so far”

“Polyphenols?” Jon blinks at him again. How on earth does Martin Blackwood know what a polyphenol is?

“Yeah, you know, when you’ve got multiple hydroxyl groups on a benzene ring like this” Martin reaches for a scrap piece of paper on Jon’s desk, a move which would have been comical if Jon tried to do it, short as he was, but Martin manages with ease. As he leans past Jon to take his pen, Jon is just close enough to smell the faint scent of Martin’s shampoo, which reminded him of pinewood. Jon’s eyes rest on Martin’s hands as he draws, the lines much straighter and clearer than anything Jon ever managed in his frantic scribbles in chemistry, always ending up with rather lopsided shapes in place of hexagons in his hurry to get everything down. Martins hands are plump, like the rest of him, and covered in freckles, like, well, Jon assumes like the rest of him, having only ever seen Martin in jumpers and long sleeves, he has no idea. He presses his thumb too hard against the pen as he holds it, like he’s scared it will escape from him if he doesn’t.

Martin is still talking as he draws

“Tannins are actually a defensive mechanism for plants, to try and protect them from being eaten, usually by insects” he gives another soft laugh “Not that that worked out very well for them, I mean humans took one look at tea and said ‘I’m having some of that! And there’s pseudotannins are well, like in rhubarb, they’re structurally similar to tannins but they don’t react during the Goldbeater’s test and you can’t actually use them for tanning, which is where actual tannins get their name from”

If Jon were aware of anyone else in the room at that point, he would have noticed that Elias had snuck away with more than his fair share of cake, and that Tim and Sasha were currently watching the pair of them with exasperated fondness.

“Now Martin’s at it!”

“Let him be. I think he’s earned it, after Jon’s stunt at his birthday”

“I seem to remember Martin being pretty enamoured with it at the time”

“Well, you know, each to their own I guess” Sasha shrugs

“Maybe it’ll make Jon be a bit nicer to him. He gives Martin enough grief”

“Not a chance. Look at him. I know you’ve watched enough rom-coms to know what that face means”

“You mean, the face of a man who has a frankly juvenile crush on his co-worker but is so childish about it he resorts to snapping at him like he’s an eleven year old girl who would rather die than admit she had feelings for a _boy_ ”

“Exactly. Come on, we might as well take the little of the cake Elias has left us”

Jon heard none of this, because at the same moment Martin was explaining how he’d actually chosen to study the tannin levels of tea during his final chemistry project at school, about how he’d spent hours in the lab extracting the tannins from dozens of types of tea, and how using indigo sulphate as the indicator made it start dark purple and then gradually move through all the colours of the rainbow until the end point was a delicate gold with a pink ring at the end of the beaker.

“I was so sick of titrating by the end of it!” He laughs. “It’s a pretty flawed method though, it’s really hard to get pure tannin out of tea leaves, I mean there’s a method for testing wine that uses calcium hypochlorite instead of potassium permanganate with the indigo but I don’t think that really solves the problem…what are you looking at?”

Jon’s gaze had slipped down to fix itself resolutely on Martin’s mouth as he spoke, trying not to notice that his lips were slightly chapped, except for one patch where he’d clearly picked at it in a moment of nervousness. Jon wasn’t actively thinking about what it might feel like if he had those lips between his teeth, but it was somewhere, in the basement of his mind, trying to break through the astonishment at hearing Martin of all people talking about titrations and indicators. He shook his head, trying to clear whatever sneaky, cobwebby thoughts were lurking there.

“Nothing, I just, didn’t realise you took chemistry” his voice is soft, a part of him not convinced Tim had stopped recording them, and he didn’t want the recorder to hear him.

“Yeah, just A-level though. My teachers said I should pick something scientific to make me look a bit more ‘well-rounded’, and in all my reading up about things that could trigger my migraines I kind of got interested, I guess”

“Right”

“Anyway, I’ll get back to work now. Sorry, you didn’t want to hear me rambling about tannins and peat bogs and…whatever, I’m sure you’ve got lots to do and I shouldn’t have, anyway, happy birthday, Jon” he babbled, pushing his chair away from the table with a screech.

“Right, yes, thank you, Martin”

Martin scurried out, and he could hear the faint thumping of Martin banging his head against the hallway wall. Jon’s eyes fell on Martin’s still mostly untouched cup of red wine, perched on the edge of his desk.

“Happy birthday to me” he said dully, picking up the cup and downing it in one go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a final chapter and there will be kissing, I promise!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok this was going to be a 'Martin goes on a spiel about highland cows and then Jon goes on a spiel about pine martens (because they're wee bears! Wee bears that need to be protected!' but it turned into a whole soft discussion between the two of them about their relative nerd moments and Jon is disgustingly soft and sappy so now I guess it's four chapters and my coursework and my chores aren't getting done any time ever
> 
> TL:DR: The boys have a conversation on a train. Some good cows are seen, but not enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for any major inconsistencies in grammar/spelling/punctuation, I'm just on a roll of 'Gotta gets word down and publish them before I think too hard and back out!' so here you go.
> 
> This is the most shameless fluff of my entire life

“JON!”

Martin’s hand slams into Jon’s arm, clasping it like a vice. He turns his gaze away from the rapidly moving hills to look at Martin.

“Martin? What’s wrong?” his eyes rake over Martin’s face, searching it for any sign of fear, of pain, what is it, what’s happening, they haven’t even made it to the safehouse yet couldn’t they just have one good day for once…

“Look at the cows, Jon!” Martin breathes, and Jon glances past him for a second through the train window, at the shaggy red-brown cows peering back at them from the not-too-distant fields. He collapses into Martin’s shoulder, burying his face in his jumper, breathing heavily.

“Jesus, Martin, don’t scare me like that” he murmurs, extricating himself from his woolly sanctuary to look up at Martin.

Martin, who is _smiling_.

The first true smile he’s seen on him in, months? Years? His face is thinner since the business with the Lonely, but his cheeks are still round with deep dimples on either side.

“I’m sorry” Martin sobers, a furrow of concern appearing between his eyebrows at the idea of panicking Jon and Jon wants to cup his face in his hands and say no, he didn’t mean it like that-

Well, he reasons. What’s stopping him?

He cups Martins face in his hands, running one thumb along the edge of his jaw

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I just, after everything that’s happened, after everything that’s happened to _you_ , I thought…I took my eyes off you for a minute and I thought, I thought something terrible might have happened” his holds Martins gaze, brown like his own. Before the Archives, he might have described them as deep enough to lose yourself in. But he doesn’t much care for being lost. Martin’s eyes are a lighter brown than his had been, like dark amber, or the shade of black tea that has been brewed for exactly the right amount of time without needing milk. That’s not a very romantic metaphor, he muses.

Martin shakes beneath his hands and Jon realises he’s laughing at him.

“What?”

“You’re mumbling to yourself. You just- “ the laughs are spilling out of Martin now, bubbling out of him. “-you were talking about my eyes, and you said something, something about tannins” He is laughing so hard he has to keep stopping for breath between words.

“I, what?”

No he hadn’t

“You did, Jon. You were muttering about how my eyes look like tea, and then you definitely muttered something about tannins”

Fuck

Martin is biting his lip now, desperately trying to contain any further laughs, looking at Jon with such a fond bewilderment that he feels completely and utterly, well, lost. Heat rises to his cheeks with such a fierce intensity he half-wonders if Jude Perry has snuck up behind him and placed her hands on either side of his face. But no, the hands currently cupping his own face are very much Martin’s, when had that happened? Jon pulls Martin’s face towards his own, pressing their foreheads together, but not closing his eyes. He doesn’t want Martin out of his sight, but if Martin keeps giving him that look he doesn’t think he’s going to survive until they get to Daisy’s safehouse.

“Shut up, Martin” he growls, not unkindly.

“And you said my poetry was bad” Martin laughs again

Jon pulls away, affronted. After all of the time in the past months he’d spent listening to the tapes Martin had left abandoned in the archives, the tapes which were currently wrapped very securely in one of Jon’s jumpers at the bottom of his bag, how could he possibly-

“I never said that!”

“’Overly enamoured with Keats’ were your words, I believe” Martin reminds him, tilting his head down and looking up at Jon through his eyelashes which are frankly absurdly long for a grown man, who gave him the right-

“ _Oh_ ”

“Yeah”

“Well, that doesn’t count. That was before” although ‘before’ is a nebulous concept, he thinks, his disloyal memory reminding him of a certain birthday, of watching Martin explain polyphenols and blackwater rivers, of searching for the taste of Martin’s mouth in a cup of cheap supermarket wine

“Jon? Are you ok?” Martin asks, watching his eyes glaze over, deep in the memory

“Yes, I just…I was remembering my birthday”

“Oh” Martin blinks at him in confusion “Any particular reason?”

“It was my thirt-my twenty eighth. Tim and Sasha threw me a surprise party, and you said you couldn’t drink red wine because of all of the tannins. I…teased you, about it, because you’re always making tea, and then you were talking, teaching me, about them, for about half an hour”

Martin blinks at him again, slowly, deliberately, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing

“You remember that?”

“I, well, I, yeah” Jon stutters

“Why?” Martin wrinkles his nose in confusion, and Jon wishes desperately he could just walk out of this train carriage and fall through the space between the carriages onto the train line rather than subject himself to one more second of Martin’s scrutiny.

“It was cute” he mumbles

“What?!” Martin’s voice rises in pitch so fast it breaches the stratosphere

“It was cute” Jon mumbles again, even quieter now.

Not quiet enough for Martin to miss it though.

“Jonathan Sims, are you telling me that you let me ramble at you about tannins for half an hour at your own birthday and you thought it was cute?! And you. Never. Said. Anything?!” Martin swats him with each word, and Jon is dying, actively dying, there is no way he is sitting on a train with Martin Blackwood playfully swatting him like they weren’t just wondering a hellscape of fear two days prior.

“Well, I mean, I hadn’t met anyone else who was that excited about chemistry, usually when you talk to people about it they just glaze over, or they leave, and I didn’t really expect it from you at the time, you never struck me as the type of person who would care about that sort of stuff” he’s tripping over himself now, focussing every iota of his absurdly enhanced powers of observation and attention on the fibres of Martin’s jumper.

“Like you and the emulsifiers, you mean?”

“I, uh…” he remembers vehemently denying any memory of that incident following the fact, in what he still considers to the finest acting of his entire life, preferring denial over the truth that he had completely railroaded Martin’s birthday to talk about emulsifiers for hours. “Yeah. Like me and the emulsifiers. I’m sorry, about that, by the way”

Martin laughs again, as though every spark of joy that had sat unfelt in the bottom of Martin Blackwood’s soul had suddenly been released and they were determined to make themselves known at any cost.

“Don’t be. It was nice. It was the first time you’d ever actually looked at me, you know? I mean back then that kind of thing could sustain me for _months_ ” this time his laugh is more self-deprecating than anything else, and Jon is filled with the overwhelming desire to kiss him to burn away the rising guilt at the way he had treated Martin in the early days of their working together.

But he doesn’t. When he kisses Martin Blackwood it will not be out of guilt.

Instead he settles for taking Martin’s hand, the hand he had shaken on Martin’s birthday in some kind of desperate bid to regain control over the whirlpool of feelings that had lodged themselves deep in the pit of his stomach, and leans into it, just for a second, before kissing his palm and setting it back down between them, replacing it with his other hand and interlocking their fingers tightly.

“Well” he murmurs “You don’t have to worry about that now. I’m never looking away again”

“Bit creepy, Jon” Martin teases, but Jon brushes it away with a look of fierce intensity.

“Not like _that_. I would never do that, especially not to you. Not on purpose, anyway. I just. I want to see you happy, and safe and I want to see if you’re scared, or hurting, so I can do something about it. I just want to see _you_. Because you’re Martin”

Martin smiles, and leans on Jon’s shoulder, pressing his entire weight into the side of him. Jon watches his eyelids flutter shut, and once he’s certain he’s asleep, once Martin’s breathing has settled into a shallow rhythm, he presses a feather-light kiss to the top of his forehead. He rests his chin on the top of Martin’s head, breathes in the scent of his pinewood shampoo, and looks out at the fields.

There are no cows now, but that’s alright.

They’ll find more when they get there.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disgusting domesticity! Truly vile! With just a dash of communication
> 
> *TV presenter voice* Tonight we break from our regularly scheduled chemistry nerd programming to bring you equally nerdy rambles about animals of the Scottish highlands!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent so long refusing to let these two fuckers finally kiss and then when I finally did it I couldn't make them stop. Insufferable men.
> 
> Now I am finito and I can finally go back to my real life responsibilities.

“Martin? Martiiiiiiiin” Jon sing-songs into his ear.

They have been in the safehouse for three days. Not nearly long enough to get a hold on the nightmares. While Jon is vocal in whatever he does that passes for sleep these days, waking himself up with a cry, Martin is silent, freezing in place and staring, catatonic, at the painting of a deer that hands opposite the wall, until Jon brings him round.

There’s something about the way Jon says it, as if it’s just a normal Sunday morning and he wants to bring him breakfast because neither of them have anywhere to be, instead of dragging him out of the depths of a nightmare where there is nothing but the fog and the roll of waves too far away to reach and there is a cold that seeps in deeper than your bones, straight to the core of who you are. And who you are is relentlessly, hopelessly unloved.

He can’t bring himself to open his eyes yet, has cottoned on to the way Jon presses tiny kisses to his temple when he thinks Martin is dead to the world, and he knows if he keeps his breathing shallow enough and steady enough, then Jon will do that again.

And so he does, followed by a nuzzle into his hair that is so ridiculously domestic Martin finds himself giving a slight gasp of surprise, his eyes shooting open to look at Jon.

“I, you, what?!”

Jon jumps away, looking like a cat that has been caught embarrassing itself and trying to feign nonchalance.

“Martin! I thought you were asleep!”

“I was. What was that?”

“I, um, I made you breakfast” he gestures beside him, to the tray of toast piled high with smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, little swirls of steam rising off it into the air, and a cup of green tea.

“Oh, thank you” Martin pulls the covers up around him in a vain attempt to feel less like he’s completely exposed, even though he is as close as it is possible to be to fully clothed while wearing pyjamas. “But I wasn’t talking about that. What was…the other thing”

“Um…”

Jon looks sheepish, rubbing the back of neck and looking at anywhere that isn’t Martin.

“ _Jon_ ”

“I just…missed you. That’s all”

“So you decided to nuzzle me like a cat?”

Jon’s skin is too dark for the blush to appear on his cheeks, but his hair is tucked behind his ear on one side so Martin can see the tip of it turn a deep red. Jon mumbles something too quietly for Martin to hear.

“What was that?”

“Just eat your breakfast, Martin” Jon says with the petulant tone of a man who has been caught being too sappy for his own good, and the man he loves is staring at him again with so much love in his eyes that he is going to drown in it, and he’s in a cabin in the middle of the Scottish highlands with nowhere to hide. He lifts the tray onto Martin’s lap and perches himself on the edge of the bed, trying not to watch Martin too intensely as he brings the cup of tea to his lips.

“Thanks Jon”

Martin smiles at him, but it’s the half-smile he does when something isn’t exactly how he likes it but he’s too polite to say anything.

Jon reaches over, gently pulling the mug away from Martin’s hands, but Martin clasps on tightly.

“What are you doing?”

“You’ve got that face on. What’s wrong with it”

“It’s fine, Jon!”

“Fine is a four-letter word now Mr Blackwood. You can’t fool me. What’s wrong with it?”

Martin sighs

“Okay! It’s just, usually I add a dash of lemon and honey to it”

“Right then. Give me that” Jon says, tugging the mug out of Martin’s grasp, letting his fingers linger over Martins for a few seconds longer than necessary. Out of all of the things that have surprised him over the past few years, the discovery that Jonathan Sims is secretly a very tactile person has surprised him the most. Martin watches him make his way back to the kitchen, at the way all of his clothes, even his own clothes, which shouldn’t envelop him the way Martin’s do, hang off him like circus tents. He knows Jon doesn’t need to eat anymore, but still. Sometimes he wishes he would.

He is less surprised to discover that Jon can cook. Like, really cook. The scrambled eggs are light and fluffy with just the right proportion of seasoning, and enough butter to make any scotsman proud. He hasn’t paid much attention to what he’s eaten lately, shovelling whatever is vaguely edible into his mouth whenever he started to feel too faint, but now he finds himself savouring it, his stomach giving a loud growl and reminding him, yes, you are hungry, and you should probably do something about it.

Jon still hasn’t come back, so Martin pushes his empty tray away from him and wanders into the kitchen. No Jon.

A jolt of panic runs through him, logic utterly pushed aside at the rising sense of abandonment.

_Don’t be ridiculous, Jon wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t come all the way into the Lonely to find you just to leave you now, he’s just gone to the shops, he’ll be back in a minute…._

_…unless he’s already sick of you._

The voice in his head sounds a lot like Peter Lukas

There’s a clatter by the door, breaking the spiral before it really has a chance to start, and Martin practically runs towards the door, tripping over the leg of his pyjamas which are just a little too long for him, and falling into the doorframe.

Jon is sitting there, putting his shoes on, and he looks at Martin with a startled expression.

“Martin? Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I just…wanted to check that you were”

Jon must see the panic shimmering in his eyes, because his face softens and he steps towards Martin, the shoelaces on one foot still trailing, undone. He takes Martin’s face in his hands and smiles at him.

“We don’t have any lemon. Or honey. I was going to go to the shop and get some. I was going to come in and tell you before I left, I just, thought I’d leave you to it”

“Oh” Martin breathes

“I’m not just going to leave, Martin. I promise. I just, I worried, after everything I said on the train, and, you know, this morning, that maybe I’m coming on too strong. I mean, it’s just the two of us here, and it’s not exactly a big space, I just, I don’t want you to feel like I’m…” he’s talking faster, now, the words barely achieving coherence.

“What?”

Jon sighs

“Like I’m smothering you, I guess”

Martin’s breath tickles Jon’s nose as he laughs again

“ _Jon_ ” and something in the way he says his name, dripping with fondness, as if that somehow explains everything going on in his head, that brings a flicker of irritation in Jon’s chest.

“I mean it. I know I can be a bit much at the best of times, and you’ve just come out of the Lonely, for God’s sake, and before that, I mean you barely even spoke to anyone, barely spoke to me, and I’m scared I’m secretly making you really uncomfortable and all you really want is some space and you’re being too nice to say anything because you always do…”

“Jon!” There’s an edge to Martin’s voice now, an edge Jon has only glimpsed once or twice. “I know I used to let you walk all over me but that was a very long time ago. I’m not going to let you, or anyone do it now. If, and that’s a big if, I was uncomfortable, I would tell you. Do you understand?”

“But…the tea”

“Yes” Martin admitted “I should have just told you outright. I was just, sleepy, and I still had one foot in my nightmares, and you’d gone to all that effort, and I didn’t want you to think I didn’t appreciate it. That was all”

Jon doesn’t say anything, still worrying at his bottom lip.

“I know you’ve been giving me secret kisses when you think I’m asleep” Martin adds, and he sees that glint of panic in Jon’s eyes again

“I-“ he splutters, making a series of incoherent noises

“You know you can kiss me while I’m awake, don’t you?”

“I didn’t…want to impose…”

“Well I mean, if it was unwelcome, I think sneaking kisses when I’m unconscious would be worse than trying it while I’m awake, wouldn’t it?” Martin tries to sound light, to show Jon that he’s teasing, really.

“Yes. Yes, you’re right” he says quietly, gaze flickering down to Martin’s mouth before moving his hands away from his face and ducking down to tie his shoelaces, the tips of his ears furiously dark. Martin rolls his eyes.

“Give me a second. I’m coming with you” he adds after a moment of watching Jon fumble with his shoelaces, focussing so hard on not looking at Martin he’s practically vibrating.

****

The air is brisk and cold as they walk, not the dull cold of the Lonely, but the kind of clear cold that belongs entirely to the north, the kind of cold that stings your cheeks and makes your breath rise in puffs of smoke as you breathe out and reminds you that you are beautifully, gloriously alive.

Still, Martin is a little oversensitive to the cold at the best of times, so his hands are buried in the thickest gloves he can find, clasping Jon’s tightly. The country roads are deserted, save for the occasional sheep or six, absently chewing the grass at the side of the road. The hills beckon in the distance, and Martin wonders if they’ll have time to climb any of them before they have to go back to the real world, when he sees something that stops him in his tracks.

There, peering over the edge of one wall, is a highland cow.

“Jon” he whispers softly, although the cow looks unconcerned enough, so he doubts it would have cared if he’d spoken any louder.

“Hm?” Jon’s eyes follow to where Martin is pointing, and he smiles.

“Hello” he says, and there’s something in the way he says hello with that carefully affectionate enunciation that makes something flutter in the pit of Martin’s stomach.

“You know they’ve been in Scotland since the sixth century?” Martin says conversationally, and Jon turns his head to look at him with that deep focus that Martin still isn’t used to seeing directed at him, after all this time. The conversation from the train replays in his mind, and a faint smile ghosts his lips as he dives straight in.

“Nobody’s quite sure whether they’re native to Scotland or if they were imported by the Vikings when they invaded, but the main theory is that they’re a combination of two old Asiatic species, ‘Bos Longifrons’ and ‘Bos Primigenius’, which is how they have the long horns and that amazing hair, and those breeds originally migrated from Mongolia slowly towards the shores of the Baltic sea. Most of them used to be black, actually, and a lot smaller, but that was gradually bred into the larger red-haired cows you see now”

Jon stays silent, watching the wisps of smoke from Martin’s mouth as his breath mingles with the cold air, at the dimples in his cheeks getting deeper the longer he talks, the hand that isn’t holding Jon’s gesturing excitedly towards the cows.

There are no clocks to betray them here, and they have nowhere to be, so Jon lets him talk, explaining that the Scottish Highland Cattle Society was formed in 1884, and the black breeds were called Kyloes, which usually lived in the Outer Hebrides and had to put up with harsher conditions than the dun or red coloured mainland cows who had access to richer pastures. The cow watches on placidly.

Eventually, Martin breaks off, pausing for breath, and looks at Jon, who is staring at him with the same unwavering intensity, his own breath barely audible, as though Martin is a precious thing he’s scared of frightening away. His eyes keep darting down to Martin’s mouth, but there is still a part of Martin that’s surprised when Jon reaches for Martin’s hair and pulls him down into a kiss.

It’s not a good kiss, or a bad one. It’s nothing like any of the kisses Martin has imagined over the years, all of which focussed a little too heavily on what Jonathan Sims might taste like, usually assuming it would be tea, or cigarettes, or rum and raisin ice cream.

He tastes, rather unpoetically, like Jon.

Both of their lips are a bit chapped, neither of them having thought to bring chapstick on a last-minute trip to Scotland to hide from the looming threat of fearful entities and/or the police, but Martin most emphatically doesn’t give a shit. He lets go of Jon’s hand just long enough to move his hands to his waist, tugging him in closer. He moves away just for a moment to catch his breath, and Jon chases after him, pulling him in closer, hungrily, like Martin is a statement and all he needs to survive now is to keep kissing him, like he’s the one being compelled now and the only thing that can tear him away from Martin is the end of the world itself.

Jon pauses, his nose brushing over Martin’s, his breathing more ragged now. There’s a ferocious satisfaction in it, that Jon is like this because of _him_. He leans back, counting every single freckle from Martin’s ears down to the edge of his jawline with the kind of accuracy you can only achieve if you’re the avatar of an entity that specialises in knowledge.

“Three hundred and seventy two”

“What?” Martin’s voice sounds miles away, but not distant in the way it had been in the Lonely, just, like he’d departed his body and he was trying to find his way back to it.

“Your freckles. I counted”

“What, all of them?”

“Well, just the ones on your face. I’d prefer it if we didn’t have an audience when I count the rest of them, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s rather a lot of cows here”

“But you don’t, I mean, you’re not-“

Not interested in people like that, is what he doesn’t say

“No. But my indifference to sex definitely doesn’t mean I’m indifferent about you. And, you know, I’d like to know”

“Don’t you just Know how many freckles I have? Why do you have to count them?”

“Because that’s cheating. I want to see for myself”

Martin laughs again, a giddy, reckless sound.

“You’re ridiculous”

“And what about it?” Jon raises his eyebrows.

“Nothing” Martin smiles, shaking his head indulgently. “Now, I believe you owe me a cup of tea”

He takes Jon’s hand again and drags him to the shop. They manage to find one vaguely passable lemon tucked away on the shelves, but there are more types of honey than they know what to do with. Jon spends the entire walk back outlining the differences between them, moving on to the differences between the types of bee, praising their abilities for pattern recognition, and how their method of communicating is really quite advanced. Martin drags him into a kiss any time he pauses for more than a millisecond. When they get back to the house, Jon refuses to let Martin make the tea, insisting that he stand near the counter and instruct him on exactly how he likes it. Martin watches him reach for the jar of heather honey, stealing a spoonful before he adds it to Martin’s tea, and spins him round, kissing him again.

This time he tastes vaguely floral, and Jon huffs at him in mock annoyance, muttering something about losing track of the steeping time, and did he want the tea to be right or not?

“Mmmhmm” Martin hums, claiming one of Jon’s hands for his own, watching with amusement as Jon tried to finish the rest of the task one-handed, but without protest.

There’s a flash of movement in the window and Jon freezes, walking over to stare out at the trees.

“Martin” he says softly. “Look”

Martin follows his gaze, at the brown-and-cream face peering back at them.

“It’s you”

“It’s what?”

“It’s a pine _marten_. Get it?”

Martin groans.

“That’s terrible, Jon”

“They’re not terrible. They’re wee bears. Wee bears that need to be protected”

“Oh, and that’s what I am, is it?”

“Yes” Jon says with mock sternness, leaning up to kiss Martin on the tip of his nose. “It absolutely is. Although I know, I know, you can handle yourself”

“What else do you know about pine martens then?”

Jon’s face settles into a challenge, a recognition of the game they have made for themselves.

“Well, they’re mostly endangered now. Their latin name is martes martes, which is, frankly, adorable”

“ _Adorable_. A word I never thought I’d hear from Jonathan Sims’ mouth. Call the newspapers!”

“Well if you’re going to be like that about it” Jon pouts, actually pouts, and Martin swoops in for another kiss, laughing into his mouth.

“Go on”

“They’re actually the only member of the mustelid family that have semiretractable claws, which is why they’re so good at climbing. They’re pretty much nocturnal, usually active at night and dusk, not like you I’m afraid, you early bird, but you’re both omnivorous, so you have that in common, although how either of us haven’t turned vegetarian yet I’ll never know. They live for about ten years, on average. They have extremely sensitive hearing, and they’re thought to be responsible for reducing the invasive grey squirrel population in the UK, although they’re very wary of humans and rare to see”

“Like me” Martin jokes, remembering his ghost-like presence in the archives in recent months. A mist of sadness passes over Jon’s face.

“Yeah”

“I was only joking, Jon”

“I know….” He trails off, glancing at Martin. He sighs. “I know. It’s just, that’s why I ended up looking into them in the first place. That bit about pine martens needing to be protected, it’s from an old statement, and the way you were just this, this shadow, in the corner of my eye, and I thought maybe if I was quiet enough then I’d see you. I don’t know, it just made me connect the two”

“You don’t have to protect me, you know”

“I do. I need you to be safe, Martin”

“Yes, but I mean I’m not some kind of damsel in distress for you to defend. We’re a team now. We’ll take care of each other. I’m not letting you out of my sight either” Martin presses a kiss to the top of Jon’s forehead.

“Except when I’m asleep. You might not need to sleep anymore but I definitely do” he adds, after a moments thought.

***

They settle down on the couch with their respective cups of tea, Jon nestled into the crook of Martin’s arm while Martin plays with his hair, which could really do with a comb.

As Martin’s eyes begin to drift shut, Jon nips at his ear, and Martin yelps, looking back at Jon, pupils so wide his entire eyes look black.

“Teach me something” Jon murmurs, in the same clear voice he uses as the Archivist, but deeper, without a hint of static or compulsion.

Well, maybe a little compulsion, Martin thinks, leaning down to give Jon another kiss, one tinted with a bitterness that was not unwelcome, but entirely down to Jon’s insistence on drinking black tea without a hint of milk or sugar. A kind of astringency that felt like a private joke between the pair of them now.

“What do you want to know?”


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was kicking myself because the boys hadn't said the L word and I couldn't let that stand!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual. I keep rattling this shit off and I have no regard for canon or consistency or grammar

They’ve been there for a week, and they’ve started to settle into something resembling a routine. Martin sleeps. Martin dreams. Jon lies next to Martin doing the closest approximation he can get to sleep these days, flinging his limbs over him protectively.

Usually, Jon wakes first, sneaking off to the kitchen to make breakfast, tucking the duvet around Martin as he leaves so he won’t get cold in his absence, whispering ‘I love you’ in his ear as he leaves.

On the surface, Martin doesn’t hear Jon.

In his dreams, however. He does.

In his dreams he is on the beach at the edge of the Lonely again, hearing nothing but the whoosh of the waves

In

Out

In

Out

Sometimes he hears Peter, telling him matter-of-factly that Jon has only come after him because he can’t bear the failure of losing the last of his original assistants. That he might _need_ Martin, but he doesn’t _want_ him. Every time he turns away, Peter wisps back into his vision like the apparition he is.

Martin looks down

 _I love you_ , reads the sand.

The I is an arrow, and Martin follows it along the sand. Every few paces it is there again, in larger and larger writing.

I love you, I love you, I love you

Until he wakes up

Jon leaves the tea until last, waiting for Martin to pad into the kitchen, duvet tossed over his shoulders like a cloak, to instruct him. Martin knows Jon is perfectly capable of making a cup of tea without Martin’s direction at this point. This morning, he tells him as much.

“I know. I just want you to feel like you can change your mind if you want to”

What a strange thing to say

After many, many broken eggs, they have agreed Jon gets to reign supreme in the kitchen. Martin insists on doing the dishes as his share of the work, but Jon insists on drying them, despite Martin’s protests.

“We’ll get it done faster” is all Jon says in response, but Martin suspects it has more to do with the way he deliberately brushes his fingers with his own every time he takes a plate from his hand. After all, speed is hardly of the essence. At this moment, they have nowhere else to go.

Today, Martin is still puzzling over Jon’s comment as he fills the sink with water hot enough to scald him, stealing glances whenever Jon turns away to put the dishes back in the cupboard. Jon is talking about surfactants, Martin doesn’t tell him he already knows this, between what he remembers from A-level chemistry and the sneaky additional reading he’d done after the emulsifier lecture at his birthday. He just likes to listen, relaxing into the sound of Jon’s voice.

The penny drops as he’s rinsing the last of the plates.

He hasn’t actually told Jon he loves him.

He almost laughs at the realisation. Surely he knows.

Jon is engrossed in his current tangent

“You know, after this we could fill the bucket outside with water and washing up liquid and blow bubbles. I know, I know, it’s childish, I haven’t done it since before my parents died, but I mean why not?” His focus is only 95% on Martin as he reaches for the plate, and that 5% opening is all Martin needs

“I love you, Jon” he says softly at the exact moment Jon’s fingers brush over his

The plate crashes to the floor between them, but neither of them look down. Jon’s focus is now 200% on Martin.

“You, you do?”

“Yes!” he knows he shouldn’t laugh, knows he shouldn’t have taken Jon’s awareness for granted. Even omniscient fear avatars can fall prey to doubt, he supposes.

He laughs anyway.

“Oh” Jon smiles, so brightly, so earnestly, that Martin has him enfolded in a hug before he knows what he’s doing, clutching him so tightly Jon’s words are just a muffle.

“Shit, sorry” he lets Jon wriggle away just enough to have breathing room, and they stare at each other. Jon still grinning like he’s just been given the world.

“I, uh, I love you too, Martin” he says quietly, with the air of a man who understands the power of words all too well, and is far more careful for the knowledge of it. If he says it any louder, he is scared he will unleash some strange power he can’t take back, no matter how wonderful it is.

“I know” Martin replies, equally quiet.

“Now, you said something about blowing bubbles?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaand then nothing bad ever happens to them ever again! They go back to the institute, murder Jimmy Magma (insert extended sounds of brutal golf club murder because Elias is exactly the kind of man who golfs), and then move back to the Scottish Highlands in their own cottage and they feed the pine martens and when Jon proposes Martin gives him a two hour lecture on the structure, property and history of the different metals and alloys used in wedding rings and they adopt a lot of cats! (But they keep them inside after Jon gives Martin a lecture about the environmental damages caused by outdoor cats. And also because it means more cuddles for Jon)


End file.
